As contrasted with the automated making of non-filter cigarettes, filter cigarette manufacture presents a more demanding operation in its continuing requirement for supply of filter rods to the ultimate cigarette maker or assembler. Typically, the supplied rods are elongate solid cylinders of fibrous material cuttable longitudinally to form a plurality of filter plugs, each for use in the making of an individual cigarette. Whereas hand or manual feeding of rods to the maker directly at the making location has long been practiced, for example, by placing trays of rods atop a rod hopper on the maker, more recent efforts have sought to feed rods to the rod hopper in automated manner from a location remote from the maker, apparatus for use in such systems being disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,608,972 and 3,222,110 and British Pat. No. 1,070,339 and entire systems being commercially known, for example, the machinery identified as "APHIS (Automated Plug Handling Inspection System) II", produced by the Molins Machine Co., Ltd. and described in its publication for such machinery, entitled "Illustrated Parts List".
In applying pneumatic rod transfer to filter cigarette making, systems and apparatus known prior to the present invention are considered not to accommodate the process to a commercially desirable extent. In a first instance, such prior art arrangements are not considered to service the maker with a sufficient reserve capacity of rods to permit continued operator-unassisted maker activity during typical "down" periods of the pneumatic rod transfer apparatus, i.e., periods during which malfunction therein interrupts automated maker rod hopper feeding for several minutes. In a second instance, these prior art arrangements are considered not to provide for delivery of rods to the maker rod hopper sufficiently quickly upon the occurrence of a demand for filling thereof.